Well, it's at least slightly plausible, if Reni didn't actually use her talons. He's still *gotta* be hurt from that sort of impact, not to mention falling off the wall, but perhaps he might not be *quite* dead (at least, in TK, where people often seem to not get hurt by things quite as much as they probably ought to).ChaosSepher wrote:So is this wolf dead or what? He appears surprisingly alright for someone who was epicly [censored] slapped by a dragon. Would be neat to see him come to later for interrogation.
I'm guessing illusion spells. The attackers don't need them, they just need to look like scary templar, but you'd need illusions to disguise yourselves as guards.Relief unit, eh? Now that is interesting. Now they were able to pull off this charade with the full dark cloak and hood deal, but wouldn't this "Relief Unit" have to be a bunch of humans? As none of the guards here seem to wear helmets that would conceal that much. Also wondering just how many wolves were "penned" at this point.
Aurora wrote:Altho' he's one of the bad guys, he's kinda cute, isn't he? x) [Pets]
TheMouse wrote:Yeah, he's cute. Dammit Tom, how dare you make us question his badguyness! Granted, he was fully prepared to kill a little girl, so sympathy isn't going to happen.
I actually like this, a lot. It's quite realistic - bad guys don't necessarily have to *look* like bad guys. In any war, most of the combatants on either side are just ordinary people, and even the higher-ups, the ones that we might label as 'bad guys' if we disagree with their cause, still were born the same way as you or me. For example (at the risk of godwinning), while we've become conditioned to associate Hitler's face with 'ultimate evil', if you just *look* at pictures of him in isolation and do your best to put aside what you know about him and what he did, all you really see is a grumpy-looking dude with a somewhat odd mustache. It's only in bad fiction that the bad guys are universally mustache-twirling dark and evil-looking figures or blood-dripping spike-covered skull-bedecked butchers. (Not to say that such portrayals *can't* have a place, but overuse of that sort of thing is just laziness.)musicgeek wrote:Also, damn it he's cute. Would pet/10.
And one of the reasons I like this sort of image is that, not only is it realistic, it makes us think about the nature of what we label as 'evil'. It's much more reassuring if we can think of people who do evil things as just being 'monsters'. It lets us dehumanize them, write them off as aberrations, distance ourselves from them, and reassure ourselves that 'normal' people could never do things like that. But the fact is, that's just not true. 'Normal people' can, have done throughout history, and continue to do, evil things. It is part of our nature; we have within ourselves the capacity for both good, and great evil, as much as we might wish we did not.
And that's a scary thing. Hitler did monstrous things. But Hitler was not *just* some sort of inhuman monster. Hitler was a real human being. He had friends, family, and loved ones. He loved dogs. He was a vegetarian out of concern for animals. Before he became the embodiment of evil, he was a painter. He had personality quirks, human weaknesses, hopes, fears, and dreams. The idea of Hitler the inhuman monster is scary enough, but what's even scarier is the idea of Hitler the human being who was still capable of doing such monstrous things while genuinely believing he was doing good. It means that we can't take refuge in the comforting illusion that people are fundamentally good, that we don't have to worry about 'normal people' doing such terrible things. We, as individuals and societies, are just as vulnerable, just as capable of sincerely leading ourselves into evil, whether through action or inaction, as he was, and we don't like to admit that.
And so, coming back to the comic, we have this perfectly ordinary-looking wolf, who by the standards of the readers could even be labeled 'cute', who nevertheless was bombarding the town with fireballs mere seconds ago. He almost certainly wouldn't consider himself 'evil', and likely sincerely believed that he was doing right, whether in the service of his race, or his organization, or whatever cause he supports. On the one hand Kei calls them '[censored]', but at the same time the comic subtly undermines that dismissal. It's comforting for the inhabitants of Edinmire to think of their attackers as *just* that, but, as usual, real life is more complicated, and things don't fit into the nice neat boxes we'd like them to. 'Evil' can coexist with 'people' and even with 'ordinary', and the appearance of this wolf reminds us of that.
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